Construction Procurement

Building activity in Canada continues at record levels, and while this is good for contractors, trades and manufacturers, owners and construction project managers continue to experience challenges due to:

Constantly changing specifications

Need for specialized skills

Legal exposure

Rising material and product costs

Delays in job completion

Lack of competitive bids

Hiring challenges and rising labour costs

MERX provides the construction industry extensive functionality designed specifically to address these special requirements. This functionality can be categorized in the areas of:

This functionality is bound together in one service that provides you with extensive management oversight into your tendering process, complete with audit trails from which reports and be extracted and distributed to key stakeholders.

Project Advertisement

Whether you work with a group of prequalified suppliers and contractors or you want to create a broad awareness of the project you are tendering, MERX is the way to reach your intended audience. Manage your distribution lists on MERX by publishing a “by invitation” tender or open your project to the thousands of suppliers/contractors who search MERX every day. Suppliers do not need to be registered with MERX to view the abstract of open tenders; registration is only needed if suppliers would like to access all elements of your project.

Document and Amendment/Addenda Distribution and Tracking

Specifications and drawings need to be changed and updated. "Did my electrical contractors all get the amendments so that they are compliant with their bids?" After you change documents on MERX all potential bidders are immediately notified and have instant access to the most up to date versions.

Construction procurement by its very nature is filled with evolving complexity. MERX is the number one way to track those who have downloaded the original documents as well as any amendments or addenda that are imperative to submitting a successful bid. With MERX you can verify whether key suppliers have accessed the tender and communicate with them to find out if they will be bidding. Complete reporting and tracking of this information is all part of the MERX service.

MERX also provides a complete printing and electronic (CD/DVD) distribution service for your suppliers so that they can order partial or complete sets of drawings, multiple copies of the entire tender or a DVD containing all original and amended components.

Vendor Management

You had 10 electrical contractors on your prequalified list and 3 are no longer qualified to meet your needs, now what? Clients use MERX every day to broaden and grow their supplier lists. With over 200,000 suppliers across Canada and around the world, MERX can help make sure you do business with the most qualified suppliers meeting your needs and specific requirements. Our database encompasses everything from the most specialized goods and services providers to common commodity suppliers.

Bid Receipt

One more way that MERX is helping organizations cut down on the use of paper and improve efficiencies is through the use of our Electronic Bid Submission feature. Recognized in Canada as a legally binding and enforceable contracting feature, Electronic Bid Submission ensures that bidders are able to amend and deliver bids right up to the posted closing time. This provides you with confidence that compliant bids have been received, on time. You determine whether to use the Electronic Bid Submission option as a mandatory or optional method. Your suppliers and contractors will appreciate knowing that they don’t have to rely on couriers or fight rush hour traffic to ensure their bid is received.

MERX ties all of these features together for you with multi-level access to management reports and activity surrounding your projects. You can see details about the projects you are responsible for, while management can view into either individual project details or simply an overview of all of your tendered projects.